I’m still here, still working! I’ve been terrible about updating my online presence, other than my (almost) daily posts to Instagram. To see a true chronicle of my studio practice, please follow me there. Between work and travel and other responsibilities, many days it’s all I can do to grab 45 minutes or so in the studio in the morning.
So, yes, the work is flowing and evolving and piling up. I have canvases and art supplies and stacks of works on paper, charcoal drawings, and the like, crowded around the studio.
2016 has been a year of real creative growth for me. Maybe I will never feel as though I’m done maturing as an artist, but I would venture to say I have reached a different level. I’m focusing more on what feels personal and internal to me. At the same time, my abilities and techniques feel less limiting so I can explore more ambitiously in the work. The result is me thinking I will end up a very different artist than I once set out to be.
I understand the truth of what Pablo Picasso once said: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
Right now I’m exploring stars, rocks, comets, moons, and all things otherworldly. But I don’t think it is only that I’m thinking about fantasy intergalactic travel (although maybe a little). I’m thinking of inner depths. I’m intrigued by what lies beneath the surfaces of moons and planets and everything else. So that’s the story with these current explorations.
My day job is busy these days and I’m taking some online classes in graphic design, so it is difficult to squeeze in studio time, but after chipping away at this for a few years, it has become an ingrained habit. I am not afraid of lapsing into a non-artistic life anytime soon! And that, perhaps, is where my progress is greatest.
pithandrootstudio.com 